Shanna Smith is President and CEO of the National Fair Housing Alliance. Shanna was selected by the board of directors to establish NFHA’s office in Washington, DC in January 1990. As President, she is responsible for implementing NFHA's Strategic Plan. Under her leadership, NFHA has expanded from a staff of two to a staff of nineteen with programs in public policy, communications, membership services, industry relations, consulting, education and outreach, hate crime prevention and response and enforcement.
Ms. Smith began her career in 1975 as the Executive Director of the Toledo Fair Housing. In Toledo, she pioneered mortgage lending, appraisal, mortgage insurance, homeowners insurance, real estate sales, and sexual harassment in housing investigations and litigation. She negotiated the first Community Reinvestment Act agreement to include damages for victims of lending discrimination and other agreements to renovated branch bank offices and open brand new branch banks in under served neighborhoods.
Ms. Smith is involved as one of the fund raisers and leader for many of NFHA's key achievements to date, including:
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Creation of new, full-service fair housing centers in Birmingham and Montgomery, AL; Fresno, CA; New Orleans, LA; San Antonio and Houston, TX; Boston, MA; Gulfport, MS.
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Investigation and testing programs leading to agreements with many of the nation's largest insurance providers involving ground-breaking changes in homeowners insurance underwriting as well as training, testing, agent office placement and marketing.
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Collaboration with other civil rights organizations to convince Congress to make HUD's Fair Housing Initiatives Program permanent.
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Establishment of several national multi-media campaigns in collaboration with The Advertising Council and The CauseWay Agency to promote fair housing enforcement and the benefits of living in integrated neighborhoods.
Ms. Smith has been an expert witness in many fair housing cases and consults with private fair housing agencies in the development of testing for rental, sales, lending, and insurance complaints. She provides training to lending institutions, insurance companies, appraisers, real estate agents, and rental management companies.
She serves on the executive committee of the Leadership Conference on Civil Rights and co-chairs its Fair Housing Task Force. She also serves on the Board of the Center for Responsible Lending and was appointed in January 2008 to the Federal Reserve Consumer Advisory Council.
Over the past twenty years, Ms. Smith has testified before Senate and House Banking committees about fair housing policies involving lending, private mortgage insurance, and homeowners insurance. She has also testified before oversight committees about the Departments of Justice and HUD fair housing enforcement actions. She has written articles for the lending industry illustrating policies and practices that violate fair lending laws and regulations. She has co-authored chapters in two books with Cathy Cloud, one on mortgage lending discrimination issues and one on homeowners insurance redlining issues.